"Using items invented by Erik Vadrok, the grandson of the inventor of mnemology, Benoît Faivre has put this hidden memory back together. Acting with total impunity, visitors become intrusive witnesses to the lives of others, listening to things they should never have had the opportunity to hear."
Compléments d’Objets
Resources
Upcoming Events
Documentary Object Theatre (2007)
Also available in installation form
All audiences, 8 years and over – Duration 1h or free tour
Car keys, mirrors, telephones, urinals, coins and olive pits all have the surprising ability to record and store life moments: this was something that Dragomir Vadrok, the Bulgarian inventor of mnemology, came to realise. Drawing inspiration from his controversial work, Vadrok’s grandson Eric Vadrok, with help from the ever-versatile members of La Bande Passante, was able to build curious machines capable of ‘hearing’ snatches of everyday life enclosed in certain objects. A technician is on-hand to welcome the audience, guiding them among these eight, extremely lifelike prototypes. Individuals are then able to handle these “items of evidence” themselves and to listen to true stories, whether humorous or tragic. Built like a practical joke, Compléments d’Objets creates a humorous setting in both its performance form and its installation form, where audiences are invited to intrude into the lives of others and to consider the previously unimagined capacity of objects to pay witness to our past.
In pictures
What if objects had ears (and a memory)?
The first performance created by Benoît Faivre was borne out of a desire to give life to minor news items taken from newspapers. Having developed a fascination with these stories, many of which are so strange as to seem fictitious, he devised a performance-installation where fiction lends a greater sense of credibility to real life. Objects from daily life that you love, discard or consume all come together to form the memory of events that we have witnessed. Car keys give us the chance to hear what happened before a bizarre accident, while listening to beer caps gives us the story of drunken night gone wrong. Just like in real life, the seemingly banal can turn to tragedy in the blink of an eye. In the work of Benoît Faivre, equal attention is paid to the memories housed in a famous work of art by Marcel Duchamp as to the family stories preserved in a wardrobe or the glimpses of the lives of hotel guests captured by a mirror. Through mnemology, La Bande Passante give an extraordinary, romantic dimension to the everyday.
Installation or performance
Through the eight interactive machines of which Compléments d’Objets is comprised, audiences are invited to listen to the stories individually using headsets or to listen to them as a group. Each machine is the result of a seemingly thrown-together DIY project using retro objects: corded telephones, audio tape reels, a wardrobe found in a second-hand shop, etc. Using sound, light and video, “animated” objects are imbued with stories. Benoît Faivre, who is also a creator of sounds and a specialist in sound effects, wrote and “aired” the soundtracks, all of which are radio fictions. Depending on the location, Compléments d’Objets can be changed into a performance-installation or a simple exhibition. In the first instance, a scientific researcher played by Benoît Faivre introduces the principles of mnemology and guides the public among these “Interactive Memory Machines”. In the second instance, the public are free to move around and activate the DIY machines themselves. An old-fashioned computer converted into a learning terminal will provide visitors with everything they need to know about mnemology.
, Telerama TTT
Coproduction et soutien
›Le Carreau, National Theatre of Forbach and Est mosellan
›Le Carré, National Theatre of Château-Gontier
›Théâtre Gérard- Philippe, publicly-funded theatre of Frouard
›Centre culturel Pablo-Picasso, Homécourt publicly-funded theatre
›Scènes et Territoires, Scène conventionnée Multisites Lorraine
›Jarnisy Theatre
›Scènes du Jura, Lons-le-Saunier multi- site publicly funded theatre
›MJC ‘3 Maisons’ of Nancy
Equipe de création
Eric Vadrok, with the complicity of Benoit Faivre, Julien Goetz, Samuel Parmentier, Florent Prévoteaux, Frédéric Simon.